Parenthood Cry-cap: Tears, Jerked

Parenthood Cry-cap: Tears, Jerked

Since I’ve complained on more than one occasion that not enough tears have been jerked from our eyeholes during season five of Parenthood, the extreme weepiness of this, the penultimate episode, was sort of refreshing. I needed salty discharge to cathartically swim down my cheeks while I watched Kristina Braverman choke her way through a good-bye to her cancer-stricken friend Gwen. I really, really did.

At the same time, the more rational side of my brain — the part that hates Love Actually and finds YouTube proposal videos cloying, and once opted to spend a long bus ride staring out the window because that seemed more compelling than reading the God-awful Nicholas Sparks novel that was in my lap — thought the heavy emotion was ladled on a little thick. First there was one Gwen scene (the home-hospice good-bye one, which killed me), then there was another one when Kristina found out Gwen had definitely died (also muchos tears), and then there was another one, with that damn sapling that’s obviously destined to grow into the tree of life. (Are you trying to suck all the liquid out of my body via my tear ducts, Parenthood?) Yeah, rational me was too waterlogged to put up a legitimate fight at that point. Read More...